


A train and nine lives

by pinkichor



Series: Seven and a Half Lives [1]
Category: GOT7
Genre: Comfort, Fluff, M/M, Past Lives, Rebirth, Soulmates, because they're so pure, it's just so pure, like no angst here
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-06
Updated: 2017-12-06
Packaged: 2019-02-11 07:50:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12930801
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pinkichor/pseuds/pinkichor
Summary: The superstition of cats having nine lives was true, and Jinyoung’s last life, as a cat, was his eighth life. And all seven and a half previous lives had not warranted enough kindness for Jinyoung to plead for a human life. But that man on the other end of the bench had changed all that in a matter of days.





	A train and nine lives

**Author's Note:**

> so someone i know talked about this "jinyoung is the cat jaebum used to feed and reborn jinyoung sees him on the train wyd" au to destress and so to destress i wrote some words and glued them together into some kind of story-esque thing and i hope she likes these words. maybe. 
> 
> anyway i love jjp and cats so like murder me where i stand with soft tbh   
> okay unbeta'd and inconsistent tense and written very late after finishing my korean composition assignment lmao but hope you enjoy! (what is studying during deadweek anyway when you can save the last of your sanity with fic writing ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯ )

 

Jinyoung loved the bench seats on the train more than anything. Most of the time, only one other person would sit beside him instead of the two people the bench could technically fit. But he was regretting that decision, having his fidgeting on display, where he couldn’t even look out the window comfortably to ignore his own embarrassment and inner conversations.

Jinyoung knew he wasn’t staring at him. Not _exactly_. It wasn’t staring if he glanced away every few seconds. And the man sitting beside him on the train was cute, but that was not the point. Here Jinyoung was at 23 years old, taking the train back to Seoul and glancing at the face of someone he _used_ to know. The man had a stronger jawline, darker hair, older, but the two moles under his eyebrow and the comfort he exuded were the same.

He was the entire reason Jinyoung was here. Was _human_. The superstition of cats having nine lives was true, and Jinyoung’s last life, as a cat, was his eighth life. And all seven and a half previous lives had not warranted enough kindness for Jinyoung to plead for a human life. But that man on the other end of the bench had changed all that in a matter of _days_.

Jinyoung remembered the cold, harsh winters, holing up beside dryer vents and under decks where the wind touched his fur less; finding corners to hide in on covered porches to avoid snow as much as possible. The man was a boy then, on his way to school, and Jinyoung had startled enough to start running, but the boy had stopped moving.

Crouched down and pulled off his glove and stretched out his bare hand, doing a soft clicking to call Jinyoung back over. He had more grudges as a cat, more to feel vulnerable and anxious about. But he had walked cautiously back over to the boy, tentatively sniffed his hand and the boy cooed, unmoving, until Jinyoung rubbed his head against the boy’s fingers, now turning red from the winter cold. The boy unzipped his jacket halfway, and asked if Jinyoung wanted to go for a walk.

Jinyoung hadn’t run off yet, so the boy rightfully took it as an agreement. He carefully set Jinyoung inside his coat, putting his arm under the bulk of Jinyoung’s weight and zipped the coat higher. It was the warmest Jinyoung had felt in three lives. The boy didn’t talk much, but Jinyoung sometimes heard him humming to himself, muffled by the coat. Jinyoung peeped his head up once in a while to listen unmuffled, or to rub his head against the boy’s cheek.

Jinyoung had incredible control over his voice, but he found himself starting to meow at odd times when the boy hummed, at the cozy crunch of his boots carrying them over the snow. And the boy smuggled him into the classroom just like that, except for two girls who were confused as to why they kept sneezing, and Jinyoung’s unwanted meowing which the boy was _horrible_ at covering for, but someone else who seemed to be his friend was a genius liar. They survived the day, complete with his friend scolding him while also praising how cute Jinyoung was.

But he wasn’t cute enough to keep.

The boy’s parents did not want any more strays brought in. What if Jinyoung didn’t play well with others, or vice versa? What if he had fleas? Jinyoung had been alone for too long, his friend said.

“That’s why I have to take care of him,” the boy replied. “If I let him go now and he dies over winter, it’s on me. It wouldn’t be right.”

But he already had three cats, and once he walked through the door, his mother knew Jinyoung was snuggled under his coat. The boy pleaded to just keep Jinyoung over winter, keep him safe just for another couple months until the snow and ice storms stopped. No amount of chore-promising made her change her mind. She watched the boy walk back out, trusting he’d say goodbye and release Jinyoung back into his freezing death.

But instead, the boy walked around the house to a window, a bucket by it that Jinyoung could easily jump onto to reach the small perch in front of the window. “Just because she won’t let me keep you in the _house_ doesn’t mean I can’t keep you at all,” he said. “I’ll set up something cool, okay? And when she’s not looking I’ll let you inside. Like a friend visiting! That’s all it is,” he reasoned to himself, out loud to Jinyoung. “So just stay here and wait, okay? You’ll see me through here,” he pointed to the window. He set Jinyoung on the window ledge and disappeared back in the house, emerging a few minutes later and opened the window.

He set out a partial can of tuna, and a small cap of water. Jinyoung tried to eat and drink slowly, show gratitude and enjoy his food for however long it lasted, but he had eaten it in the blink of an eye, meowing and licking his lips, wide-eye stare right on the boy. The boy was flittering around his room, another cat dancing around him as he pulled out an extension cord and a heating pad, a thin rain coat and then a padded, winter coat.

He put the thin waterproof material over the heat pad, “because it _cannot_ get wet,” he commented, and did his best to roll and tie up the winter coat into something resembling a nest of fabric. He plugged the extension cord into an outlet and connected it to the heating pad, pulling Jinyoung carefully inside and onto his desk, “just for a moment, okay,” and the other cat just stared, curious about how Jinyoung “got his spots,” it meowed at him. “I earned them,” Jinyoung meowed back and the boy desperately hushed at him.

And then he was plopped into the nest. The boy had tried to bring the outer ring of fabric up to shield from the wind and keep more warmth in, and the heating pad covered the flat bottom of the coat-nest. “I’ll keep it low so it doesn’t hurt you.” Already, Jinyoung felt warm enough to sleep comfortably. “I’m sorry this is all I can give you,” he lowered his head to Jinyoung, resting it against his arm along the windowsill. He brought his free hand up to gently pet at Jinyoung’s ears, and then softly and with only his fingertips, pet under Jinyoung’s chin.

It was _nice_. He had actually felt _loved_ and wanted. He originally had a different name, having forgotten it in this life, but the name Jinyoung reverberated within the boy’s heartbeat, and it was then Jinyoung had a feeling his next life would be as a Jinyoung and not as a Fluffy or Spot or _Kitty_.

Jinyoung had still wandered around, needing to stretch and exercise as much as any other living creature, but he was always met with a makeshift bed, as warm as it could be in the winter cold, and food and water. It was always waiting there. The boy was always waiting for him, window partially open and desk facing the outside; studied and would sigh when Jinyoung hadn’t shown up and it was already dark outside. Jinyoung watched him from the bushes one night, thinking him oddly cute for a human, worrying more about a stray calico than his own grades. And just as the boy was turning off his desk lamp, Jinyoung ran across the yard and up into his warm, outside bed.

He stared at the boy, the boy scolding him for returning so late and all the things he had worried about, but Jinyoung just closed his eyes, knew that the boy had closed his too, letting his forehead fall onto Jinyoung’s and that was that.

Jinyoung never quite caught anything else besides that, besides every time he snuggled into the boy’s coat when he went to school or to the store; besides watching the Earth wake up and the boy running around outside with a camera and notebook, always clicking for Jinyoung to circle around his feet and make him laugh.

So he pleaded for his ninth life to be a human one, no matter the consequences or penalty he’d have to pay. To be named Jinyoung so maybe the boy would recognize him if he was reborn, too.

But this wasn’t the romance stories make it out to be. Jinyoung was just. _Awkward_. And clammy. He didn’t want to touch his own palms, so why in the world did he keep doing exactly that? The boy who fed his eighth cat life was now a man sitting a single space away and Jinyoung desperately tried to think of an approach to strike a conversation.

Because meowing at him was not how humans did things. Neither was rubbing his head against the man’s shoulder. Or placing his paw—hand—over the man’s hand. His mind spun and spun and raced and filled to the brim until Jinyoung stopped paying attention to keeping himself steady and the train hit the breaks a little too harsh, too quick, and Jinyoung lurched sideways, his bag sliding to the man. Jinyoung pulled it back to his side and apologized.

The man placed a bookmark between yellowing pages and closed his book. And then he looked curiously at Jinyoung, quirking an eyebrow. “You’re in the literature department.”

Jinyoung’s stunned for words, but the man points to the college tag hanging off the handle of Jinyoung’s bag. “Oh, yea—yes! Yes, literature. That’s me.”

“Did you read this one perhaps,” the man taps the book against his hand, cover facing Jinyoung. “I haven’t really been able to make sense of it, yet.”

Jinyoung had read it. Had done an extensive essay about the different ways to read the story and how one could pull it apart in two thousand and one ways, down to the very politics laced between the spaces. He tried to speak and choked a little. So he cleared his throat and started again. “Yeah, we read it. Not sure if I’m remember it all, but I can try to help?”

The man’s shoulders literally slumped downward, visible relief spreading to his feet. He took out his other earphone and draped them around his neck. “I’m Jaebum, by the way,” he turned more towards Jinyoung, the space between them not really being enough for a small person to fit.

Jinyoung extended his hand. “Park Jinyoung.”

Jaebum shook his hand, holding onto it a brief second longer than he should have. He tilted his head while looking at Jinyoung, assessing his features for _something_. “Jinyoung.”

It was a silence, save for the squealing of metal against metal outside and the final stop announcement overhead and the rustle of other passengers gathering their belongings. And breaking the pause, Jaebum tapped Jinyoung’s nose with his fingertip. Lightly, softly, and Jinyoung almost chased it.

Jaebum’s mouth dropped open, glancing between the offending finger and Jinyoung’s reactions. Or lack thereof.

“I have _no_ idea why I booped your nose. That was really weird, right?”

Jinyoung scrunched up, but he wasn’t supposed to be a liar. Jinyoung broke into laughter, pure joy ringing out, whiskers appearing at the corner of his eyes. He bent over towards Jaebum, and Jaebum started laughing with him, no space between them as they let the strange meeting melt into something masked as fate.

And Jinyoung did not judge when Jaebum invited him over for studying and Jaebum didn’t ask questions when Jinyoung started meowing at his cats and them meowing back, seemingly having one wild conversation.

“You lost your spots,” Nora the cat meowed.

“I’ll earn new ones,” Jinyoung the human meowed back.

 

**Author's Note:**

> the heating pad thing was inspired by that one post around twitter that one time because someone actually did that and the two kitties were so cute omg. anyway one day i hope jaebum owns like twenty cats but who knows if that will happen at the rate bammie is collecting cats too (go son go) 
> 
> i hope any bit of this was okay and cute to read! i'd say maybe i'll write another installment for this but i always say that for my works lmao. but if you want i can be seen on [the twt](https://twitter.com/pinkichor) or [curiouscat](https://curiouscat.me/pinkichor)
> 
> have a good day and if it's deadweek for you too know i'm praying for us all rip


End file.
